What Berkeley, Inc. Thinks...

While the Wall Street Journal editorial pages are as conservative as the editorial pages of the New York Times are liberal, most of the information posted by their staff journalists is relatively unbiased. The article being posted with this blog provides the best summary we’ve found of the positions by Trump and Clinton regarding the primary financial institutions and their regulation. It’s 13 pages long but it’s a thorough and balanced overview.

As with the Wall Street Journal's piece on the candidate's positions on Wall Street, this article summarizes their positions and proposals on taxes, budget deficit, trade, immigration and the minimum wage. Some of Trump's positions are much more generalized than Clinton's, but he's tended to offer conflicting views via Twitter while Clinton seldom deviates from her script.

Reading the Foreign Policy section on the Wall street Journal's summary of policy positions reminded me how complicated this has become. With the United States currently the only world superpower, the country's international relationships are broad and deep. The three primary areas for the next president will revolve around Russia, China and the Middle East, but as seen in this article, significant international issues exist over most of the globe.

Usually, social issues provide the greatest divergence between Republican and Democrats, and while Hillary Clinton's views have remained relatively consistent, Donald Trump's view on a few major topics have evolved in the past few years. In reading these summaries it reminds me of how many issues the Executive Branch of government, in particular the president, needs to know and address. While the voters often know one or a few issues thoroughly, the president needs to know all of them reasonably well. It reminds me of the relationship between a doctor and their patient. If the patient has non-small cell lung cancer they will likely know as much about it as their general physician soon after the diagnosis. But their family physician also needs to be familiar with most of the cancers of the body in addition to the other few hundred unrelated ailments and maladies. Being president is brutal. I'm glad other people are willing to tackle the challenge.